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KIRKUS REVIEW

The story of one of the most innovative companies in the
world: the automobile manufacturer that makes some of the best-selling and
longest-lasting cars on the road.

Superlatives aside, Honda's record speaks for itself,
and International Business Times editor in chief Rothfeder (McIlhenny's
Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire, 2007, etc.)
highlights the achievements of its founder, Soichiro Honda (1906-1991). In the
United States, Honda remains at the pinnacle of the auto industry, with such
iconic models as the Civic, Accord and Odyssey; 75 percent of the cars and
trucks it manufactured over the last 25 years are still on the road. For
skeptics, the author's acknowledgments and the reference section detailing his
sources will be helpful. In Rothfeder's telling, Honda is a much different auto
manufacturer than others. Unlike Toyota, for example, it is not organized as a
top-down pyramid of control. Honda's flat-type organization encourages local
inputs. In Marysville, Ohio, technician Shubho Bhattacharya's Intelligent Paint
Technology reduced “energy usage in the paint shop by 25 percent” and was
rapidly deployed globally to like effect. Unlike General Motors and Ford, Honda
also builds its own machinery, and workers cooperate with engineers to
configure production lines, as they did in Lincoln, Arkansas. There, the
“line's coiled shape” helped reduce its footprint and costs while providing a
flexible assembly and quality-control capability. Soichiro Honda's career as an
innovator took off in the 1920s, when he patented a design for unbreakable
cast-iron auto wheels, and continued through his mastery of the skills required
to manufacture piston rings that could improve combustion engine performance.
Since then, the company has led the way in engine development. As the founder
said, “success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection.
In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from
the ninety-nine percent that is called failure.”

A case study of the methods required to revive manufacturing
industries.

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